27. The Real Reason Your Meetings Aren’t Working

Episode 027: The Real Reason Your Meetings Aren’t Working

Episode 2 of 9 in the series, "The Founder's Blind Spot"

In Episode 026, we looked at how ineffective meetings leave you drained and busy without progress.

In this follow-up, we dig into the real blind spot: the illusion that adjusting the number of meetings — more or fewer — will fix the problem.

That’s the meeting mirage.

Because people gathered, talked, and filled the time, it feels like progress must have been made. But without structure, clarity, and decisions, nothing really changes.

In this episode of Leadership in 5, James takes you inside the blind spot most founders miss — thinking meeting quantity is the lever, when the real fix is structure and clarity that actually move the business forward.

This episode is for founders who are tired of watching problems resurface week after week because meetings drift, decisions don’t stick, and ownership never gets claimed.

Takeaways:

• Why more or fewer meetings won’t solve the problem.
• The “meeting mirage” — why activity gets mistaken for progress.
• How lack of structure turns meetings into pointless theater.
• The marks of a healthy meeting: focused, structured, decisive.
• Why structure and clarity are the only fixes that scale.

Reflection Questions:

• If I sat quietly in the back of your next leadership meeting, what would I see?
• Would your team leave with clarity and decisions, or just the illusion of progress?
• How often do your meetings resurface the same issues instead of solving them?

For those who want to push further, here’s a set of deeper reflection questions to stretch your leadership and culture:

• Which recurring meeting in your company is really theater — time spent without decisions or ownership?
• Where in your system is structure missing, causing problems to circle back again and again?
• Are you confusing the activity of meeting with the effectiveness of moving the business forward?
• If meetings reveal your operating system, what would yours say about how your company really runs?

Two Layers of Fixing Ineffective Meetings:

• Reflection Layer (the real fix): Face your tolerance for drift. If you allow meetings that recycle issues without decisions, you’re allowing theater instead of leadership.
• Action Layer (not groupthink tactics): Keep it simple. Operational clarity is the fix:
• Define outcomes, not agendas. A meeting exists to decide, align, or unblock. If it’s not one of those, it doesn’t need to happen.
• Use “missed, met, or exceeded” language to measure progress. If what you’re talking about can’t be tracked against that, it’s just conversation.
• End with forward motion. Who owns what, by when, and how progress will be known.

That’s not micromanaging. That’s calibrated execution.

Links and Resources:

• The Next Question Guide → NextQuestionGuide.com
• LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/jamesmayhew
• Website → JamesMayhew.com